


kiss me once, fool me twice

by SouthSideStory



Series: the day after forever [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Minor Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson, Past Torture, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, minor Avengers characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-01-28 01:05:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12594588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: Someone knocks on New Year’s Eve, and when Steve opens the door the sight of Bucky nearly takes his breath away. He’s dressed in a blue shirt and trousers with suspenders, clean-shaven and short-haired, with his left hand tucked in his pocket, the image of his old self.He says, “Hey, punk,” voice shaking just a little.Steve pulls Bucky into a hug that’s maybe too hard, too needy, but Bucky only throws his arms around his back and buries his face in his shoulder.“You jerk,” he says. “Welcome home.”





	1. PROLOGUE: white lies

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last part in "the day after forever" series! You don't *need* to have read the previous stories for this one to make sense, but I do recommend it. :)

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“I wasn’t sure how to describe it, so I said, _it’s a love story._ ” - Lang Leav

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**PROLOGUE: white lies**

**{2017}**

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“We were...” Bucky frowns, and Steve watches as his statement unfolds into something more certain. “We were lovers.”

Steve turns away and busies himself with dinner. He’s still learning how to cook without boiling everything to death, and he’s found that he isn’t a quick study in the kitchen.

Bucky doesn’t let him run away, though. He leans against the counter, his vibranium arm shining under the dull kitchen lights, too close to ignore. “I don’t remember being in love,” he says. “But then, I don’t remember a lot of things.”

Steve makes himself smile, and it hurts like hell, but he can’t show that. Can’t make Bucky feel broken for not remembering things in a pretty way. Because it was ugly, all of it. Days at war, and the things they did to survive them. How Bucky used him, one fuck after another, until Steve felt like nothing more than a warm body whose sole purpose was to help his friend sleep through the night. The ugliest part of all was his own desperation, the pitiful love that drove him to open his legs over and over again.

So when Bucky asks, “Did I love you?” Steve knows the answer.

There’s a chance to do the right thing, to put trust before desire, like any decent man would.

Kissing Bucky isn’t a lie. How could it be? His longing survived war and peace, dying and coming back to life. And when a century of want is finally returned, it’s the most honest moment Steve has ever known.

“Yeah,” he whispers into Bucky’s open, willing mouth. “Yeah, you loved me.”

Steve has a chance to do the right thing, and for once—when it matters most, when the stakes are highest—he lets it pass.

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	2. ACT I: zero-sum

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**ACT I: zero-sum**

**{2016}**

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_Just like brothers._ That’s what everyone used to say about him and Bucky, even his own ma, and as a kid it always made Steve feel proud. Because it meant that what they had went deeper than friendship, loyalty and love that made them family. Later, the pride faded, and later still, Steve could feel only shame.

Now he watches Bucky, caught in cryostasis again. No matter what Steve does it seems like they always end up in the same place, one of them trapped in ice. He touches the glass of the cryo chamber. Winter cold seeps through it, and something in it calls him back to the _Valkyrie_ , that dreamless seventy years that he spent frozen in the belly of a ship. Missing his own life while Peggy married and became a mother and built an empire. While Hydra flourished in the shadow of S.H.I.E.L.D., destroying his best friend and leaving a living weapon in his place.

He braces both hands against the frosted glass, savoring the numbness that the cold brings to his skin. Bucky is right here, just inches from his fingertips, but still so far away. Unreachable.

It isn’t familial, this longing he feels, the need he has to hold Bucky, to touch him, to keep him safe. There’s nothing brotherly about his love, and there hasn’t been since he was a boy in Brooklyn, but Bucky has never felt the same. Now he’s gone again, hiding in the ice until Wakandan scientists find a way to break Hydra’s programming, so Steve’s weary heart doesn’t matter anyway.

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.

Sam asks, “You sure about this, Cap?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I am.”

The farmhouse is a beautiful thing in the way of all old constructions in the backwater corners of Britain. Ivy climbs up two stories of stonework, and a rose bush leans over the low wall that surrounds the plot of land his home sits on. Double chimneys stand proudly from either end of the house, and Steve knows that they aren’t for show. There are two real fireplaces inside, one in the master bedroom and another in the den.

It’s too big, too much for one man living a small life, but Steve has grown accustomed to luxurious amounts of space at Stark Tower and his quarters in Wakanda. It isn’t the sort of thing he’s proud to appreciate, but it is what it is.

“You once asked me what makes me happy,” Steve says. “I still don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”

Sam nods, smiling that wide, bright smile that’s stealing Natasha’s heart these days, little though she’s like to admit it.

“Well,” he says. “God knows if there’s anybody who deserves a break it’s you.”

Steve leans against the wall and asks, “What about you?”

Sam laughs and claps him on the shoulder. “Oh, you know me. Can’t keep myself from finding trouble.”

“Is ‘trouble’ named Natasha Romanov?” Steve asks.

Sam backs up, still grinning. “Funny. You’re a real funny guy.” Then he sobers, nods, and says, “I’ll be back sometime when duty isn’t calling.”

Sam and Nat are the best friends he’s made in this strange new century, and Steve almost says, _Fuck this farmhouse. I’m coming with you._

He can’t, though. Not since he left his shield, scratched and battered, in that Soviet bunker. Not since he left Bucky alone in the ice.

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Bedfordshire is everything old Brooklyn wasn’t. Tiny, quiet, green, clean. It’s a beautiful place, out of the way, populated with people who don’t watch enough television to recognize or care about Captain America. It’s perfect in its own way, but Steve doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He tries his hand at cooking, and it’s harder than he remembers. On the first night in his old-new, faraway home he attempts to make a roast chicken and loaded potatoes. He burns both and ends up boiling what little he didn’t ruin. At least he can afford butter now.

When a skinny collie shows up at his front door an hour later, Steve feeds him the burnt chicken. He keeps coming back, begging for food as regularly as the sun rises in the morning. This is how Steve ends up with a dog, which he names Anthony just for the hell of it. Maybe if Tony ever talks to him again he’ll get a kick out of it.

“Good boy,” Steve says after Anthony steals a shoe from his neighbor’s porch.

Mr. Galloway is a grumpy old man who shouts at his wife, and if he can’t find his left shoe tomorrow morning Steve isn’t too fussed about it.

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He lets his hair grow out because he can and because there’s no one here to make fun of him for it. Come November it’s too long and growing ragged around the ends, so Steve goes to the barber.

“You look familiar,” says the barber, a scrawny, white-haired man named Mr. Smith. “We met around town?”

“I think so,” Steve says, even though he doesn’t know Mr. Smith from Adam. “Maybe at the grocery store.”

“Haven’t met many Americans,” Mr. Smith says. “So, what can I do for you, son?”

“You know the style that men used to sport in the 40s? I’m thinking something like that. Neat, a little long in the front.”

Mr. Smith nods, smiling. “I’ve got it,” he says. “Should come easy. Feels like I’ve been around near as long as that.”

“Yeah, me too,” Steve says.

He settles into the seat, relaxing as the black cape is swept across his chest and around his back. Mr. Smith lowers the chair so that he can more easily reach Steve’s head. It’s a familiar feeling, the snipping of scissors near his scalp, and if he closes his eyes and listens to the jazz playing from Mr. Smith’s ancient radio, he could almost be home.

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Steve buys himself a sketch pad for Christmas. He draws his fir tree, decorated with popcorn and ribbons. Then Anthony, curled up on the hardwood floor asleep. The hills and forests beyond them, the rose bush, the ivy clinging to the front of his house. He draws the fire roaring behind its cage, casting shadows on the hearth.

And Bucky. He draws Bucky day and night, mostly the way he was before the war. An energetic troublemaking boy, bright-eyed and mischievous. He draws George and Winnie and Bucky’s little sisters too. Steve can’t bring himself to sketch his mother to life on paper. Almost eighty years after the fact, and her death still hurts.

He never has been very good at swallowing his grief.

Steve buys watercolor paints just so he can fill in his sketches of Bucky with shades of blue, the only color he could see before the serum.

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Someone knocks on New Year’s Eve, and when Steve opens the door the sight of Bucky nearly takes his breath away. He’s dressed in a blue button-up shirt and trousers with suspenders, shiny black shoes on his feet. Clean-shaven, short-haired, with his left hand tucked in his pocket. He’s the image of his old self, except for the new lines that crinkle his forehead and the wary look in his eyes.

He says, “Hey, punk,” voice shaking just a little.

Steve pulls Bucky into a hug that’s maybe too hard, too needy, but Bucky only throws his arms around his back and buries his face in his shoulder.

“You jerk,” he says. “Welcome home.”

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	3. ACT II: unmade / remade

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**ACT II: unmade / remade**

**{2017}**

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“Did I love you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you loved me.”

What was it that Natasha once said? _The truth is a matter of circumstances._

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Steve hasn’t slept since he lied to Bucky. The serum keeps him from needing as much sleep as regular people, but four days and counting pushes even his limits.

Bucky can’t sleep either, and he asks for stories about Brooklyn.

“We grew up attached at the hip,” Steve says. “You were in the room when I was born. At least that’s what our mothers always told us.”

“Bet I was a real help,” Bucky says. “Sixteen months old and all.”

His old accent comes out stronger when they talk about home, the purest Brooklyn sound that Steve has heard since before the ice. It’s beautiful like everything about Bucky always has been.

“I had a knack for getting you into hot water,” Steve says. “Fights I couldn’t win that you had to finish. Trouble in church, at home, at work, that brought adults down on you. It wasn’t much fair, since nobody would punish me like they’d punish you.”

“‘Cause you were sick?” Bucky asks.

It still rankles, how he’d been treated before the serum. Like he was helpless, pitiful, in need of rescue. Sometimes Bucky treated him that way too, but that isn’t something he’d like his best friend to remember. He’s got enough to feel guilty about without Steve piling on any more of it.

“Yeah,” he says. “Nobody wanted to risk hurting me, so you always took the brunt of the consequences.”

“Hmm,” Bucky says. “I kinda doubt that I regretted that.”

He stretches across the bed, a little groan tearing itself out of his throat. He’s only wearing a t-shirt and boxers, and he looks nice in them. Better than nice. Gorgeous enough that Steve is dying to climb on top of Bucky and ride him till he comes.

But Bucky wants to take things slow, and Steve understands. They need to get to know each other again, repair the friendship that seventy-odd years apart fractured.

Still, Bucky likes to kiss, and now he pulls Steve down to indulge that desire. They keep it almost chaste, just lips moving together for a long while, until Bucky grows bolder and the kiss wetter.

“You taste so good,” Steve says, when he comes up for air. “Always did.”

Bucky smiles, and his eyes brighten, so blue. “You too. Now be quiet so I can get back to kissing you.”

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Steve wakes gasping, pulse fluttering in his throat, heart thundering in his chest.

_I lied. I lied to him._

Bucky startles awake with him, and he rubs soothing circles on Steve’s naked back. “You okay, pal?”

Steve nods and shifts away. He can’t let Bucky comfort him right now. It isn’t right. None of this is right, and it’s too late to come clean. The truth would drive Bucky away, back into cryo, and that’s wrong too. He deserves a life, a real life, not a long sleep in stasis.

“I’m fine,” Steve says.

Bucky falls asleep in Steve’s arms. Bad dreams will wake him eventually, same as they do every night.

 _At least I’ll be here to help,_ Steve thinks. _I can do that much._

In the morning, Bucky says, “You haven’t asked.”

“Haven’t asked what?”

Steve tries to transfer an egg from the frying pan to a plate, but he busts the yolk. The yellow-orange of it bleeds across Bucky’s breakfast, and Steve decides that this one will be his now.

Bucky reaches across the range and turns off the stove. “How things went in Wakanda. Don’t you want to know?”

“Of course.” Steve turns around so that he can face Bucky. He has bedhead, dark hair so messy that it’s a great challenge not to run his fingers through it. “I didn’t want to push you, though.”

“The doctors woke me up in November,” Bucky says. “And before you bitch about it, I asked them not to tell you. Didn’t want to get your hopes up in case it didn’t come to anything.”

Steve doesn’t like that, but he keeps quiet. That was Bucky’s choice, no matter how much he doesn’t appreciate it.

“Anyway, nothing worked. Trigger words are still firmly in place.” Bucky says it blithely, like it’s no big deal. Or like it’s an ugly truth he’s long grown used to.

“Then…” Steve doesn’t know how to ask, _Why are you here?_ without sounding ungrateful.

Bucky puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders, a casual sort of intimacy that he’s only starting to get used to. It wasn’t like this during the war. Not even at the very end, when things were starting to get better. Besides, he knows now that those final moments barely counted because Bucky had been planning to kill himself.

Steve has that letter, the suicide note Bucky penned to him, tucked away in a box with his compass and his dog tags.

He pulls Bucky closer. Slowly, gently, with none of the roughness with which they used to handle each other.

“They can’t unmake what Hydra did to me,” Bucky whispers. “Nothing’s ever been able to do that except for you.”

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Anthony takes to Bucky in no time. He curls up in bed on Bucky’s side as often as Steve’s, and it’s Bucky he goes to for scraps of people-food, since he knows who the weak one is in their house.

“You’ve got a soft spot for that beggar as big as the Pacific,” Steve says.

Bucky unapologetically continues to feed Anthony pieces of his roast beef. “Ragged little shit has been through a lot. Deserves some spoiling.”

Steve hums, kicks Bucky’s foot under the table, and says, “Like someone else I know.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, as perfect and blue as Steve remembers. “They oughta call you Captain Subtle.”

Steve shrugs. “They don’t call me Captain anything anymore.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything about it until they’re curled up in a nest of blankets and pillows in front of the hearth. (It’s more comfortable than the bed in Steve’s opinion. Maybe he’s turned into a caveman, like Sam said the first time they met.)

“I know you,” Bucky says, pulling Steve closer. “You’ve always needed to stand up for other people, do the right thing. And you want me to think that you’re content here in the middle of nowhere, away from the fight?”

Steve rolls Bucky onto his back, careful to keep his weight mostly off of him. Bucky’s more than strong enough to take it, of course, but Steve doesn’t want to make him feel caught, caged.

Bucky looks up at him, scowling and waiting for an answer.

“I haven’t had my own life since 1943, and I’m tired of being a mascot,” Steve says. “And you’re here. As long as I’m with you, yeah, I’m content. I love you, Buck. Never stopped.”

Bucky looks away, that frown settling deeper across his face. “Steve, I want to say it back. I do. I just want to make sure it’s me _now_ that’s giving you that. Not me trying to be my old self, you know?”

“I understand,” Steve says.

_I’ve gotta tell him. I’ve gotta tell him now._

But he can’t. Steve doesn’t know that he’ll survive it if Bucky hates him.

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Steve wakes to Bucky sobbing, thrashing, and when he shakes him out of his nightmare, he gets punched in the face. It hurts like hell and makes his head spin, but Steve holds Bucky until he wakes.

“Oh shit,” Bucky says, scrambling to turn on the light. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t mean to--”

“It’s okay, Buck, I know that.” Steve cups his face. “I can barely feel it, and I’ll be healed in a couple of hours. Not like you got me with the metal one.”

Bucky rips away from him, puts his head in his hands, and says, “I shouldn’t have come here. What the fuck was I thinking? Everything Hydra did to me is still--I’m still theirs, Stevie--”

“Shut up,” Steve snaps. He slides his hands down to Bucky’s shoulders and grips him, hard flesh and harder vibranium. The first time he touched the metal arm he’d expected it to be cold, but it wasn’t. It ran hot like the rest of Bucky, machinery that never stopped working.

“It’s true,” Bucky says. “You know it’s true.”

Steve presses his forehead to Bucky’s. “You belong to _you_ and nobody else. Always have. It’s just gonna take time to recover. After everything they did to you it’s a miracle that you’re still standing, and I’m so fucking proud of you for it. For not giving up.”

_Like before._

Bucky snorts, but he doesn’t pull away. “You always have been too hopeful. Optimistic asshole.”

“I’m not optimistic,” Steve says. “I just see things like they are and your pessimist ass doesn’t want to admit it.”

Bucky lies back on the floor, grinning now. “Always gotta be right, don’t ya, punk?”

“Can’t help it that you got all the looks and I got all the brains,” Steve says.

He said the same thing near a hundred years ago when he was a child already half in love with his best friend, and he wonders if Bucky will remember.

Steve can tell that memory is long gone when Bucky only rolls his eyes, but it’s okay. They’ve got each other, no matter how much of the past is lost, and there’s plenty of future ahead.

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Snow starts falling at the end of January and doesn’t stop for well over a week. It’s a good thing that Steve stocked up on groceries right before the storm hit because they’re stuck in the house for days.

Bucky doesn’t seem to mind. They spend most of their time in bed where it’s warmest. Flames blaze in the fireplace, they’ve got the heat turned up, and they hide under every blanket in the house.

“Helluva lot warmer than winter in Brooklyn,” Steve says. “Do you remember sharing a bed just so we wouldn’t freeze to death? Well, so I wouldn’t. You probably would’ve been fine.”

Bucky buries his face against Steve’s chest, nuzzling at the place over his heart. “I remember some of it,” he says. “Mostly being scared shitless that you’d catch pneumonia.”

That wasn’t what Steve recalls best. It used to be torture for Bucky to keep him so close, muttering all the while that he better not breathe a word of this to anybody.

“I got hard pretty much every time you held me like that,” Steve admits. “I wanted you so goddamn bad, Buck. Ever since we were kids.”

Bucky kisses his breastbone, then his ribs. “I know,” he whispers. “I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out I wanted you too.”

Steve grips Bucky’s hair, so short now. Just like before. “Well you didn’t. Not until after the serum.”

Bucky looks up at him like he’s lost his mind. “Bullshit. I know you’ve gotta remember that night I had that awful date and we got off together. All it took was listening to you and I was so turned on I couldn’t stand it.”

Steve swallowed, hoping to God that Bucky didn’t remember this wrong. “Really? I always you thought you just saw me like a--” It’s hard to say, but he chokes it out. “Like a little brother.”

Bucky bites his lip, red as Snow White’s even in the dim light. “I did,” he whispers. “Sort of, and sort of not. That’s why it fucked me up so much.”

Steve’s love had always been so clear cut that it ached, and Bucky would never talk about what they were doing during the war. Now he’s giving more than he ever has, and Steve can’t help but tug him up by his hair and kiss him. Slow, as tender and loving as it is wet.

Bucky smiles into it and says, “Well, I think I’ve got it sorted out now.”

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	4. THE BLUE JOURNAL: 32557038

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**THE BLUE JOURNAL: 32557038**

**{2017}**

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When the snow lets up Steve buys three notebooks from the dollar store. Red, white, and blue, as per Bucky’s request.

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ENTRY #1

I want to start journaling again, but these aren’t mission reports anymore. Those are over and done with, living in the back of my brain now instead of front and center.

It’s starting to come back to me better, Brooklyn and Steve and the war. The war most of all. Memories broken and sharp-edged, but real. They’re always real, no matter how much I wish they weren’t.

Steve draws his demons. Bullet riddled bodies, the Red Skull, the train I fell from. Sometimes it’s me in a mask, the Winter Soldier with a knife in hand that haunts its way into his work. Steve never shows me those, but I’ve looked through his sketch pads when he wasn’t looking. Not a nice thing to do, but God knows it’s only a little more red in my ledger.

I don’t want to forget again. If I lose everything that’s coming back to me then I’ll just be a thing again, Hydra’s weapon, and I can’t afford that.

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ENTRY #3

My dog tags are long gone, but not even seventy years of being wiped like a chalkboard could make me forget my service number. I said it a thousand times when I was under Zola’s tender care the first time. At first I spit it at him, then I cried it, then I could barely get it out. Repeated it more out of muscle memory than anything else, like I’d trained my tongue against treason when my mind was still half together.

You’d think that after everything that happened later, those few weeks I spent at Kreischberg would feel small, just the start of Hydra’s torture in a long line of pain to come. They don’t, though. Somehow that first time was the worst, maybe because it’s the moment Zola made me his.

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ENTRY #9

I’m back to wearing blue these days, and I like it. I like it a whole lot and so does Steve.

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ENTRY #12

Spring is coming to life all around the farmhouse, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since Brooklyn.

Steve laughed his ass off when he caught me gardening the first time, wearing a heavy canvas apron with my knees in the dirt. I told him to fuck himself because I like weeding and watering the roses. It’s calming, growing things instead of tearing them down.

It only took two days to get Steve working right along beside me, and I think it’s helping him as much as it’s helping me. Christ knows he needs something to loosen him up. During the war it took a hard fuck to strip him out of Captain America mode, to unwind him back to Stevie.

I want him so bad I can taste it, but we’re not ready. Well, I’m not. Steve could probably take me right to bed today if the hot looks he keeps trying to smother mean anything.

He deserves to be made love to. We must have done it that way, but I can’t remember it. My messed up head won’t dig up the right memories, and that hurts as much as the horrible shit I do remember.

I think I love him again. I get this stupid warm feeling all over when he smiles at me, and when he’s in pain all I want is to hold him till it doesn’t hurt anymore. It doesn’t feel familiar, doesn’t line up with what I remember, but what does these days? Just about nothing. It’s like all the best things got electrified out of me for good and only the worst was left behind.

Fuck it. I’m in love now, and nobody can take that away. Not anymore.

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ENTRY #16

It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep. It’s not nightmares this time, at least not of Hydra. I remembered my first time with Steve and had to go straight to the bathroom to throw up.

I’ve been telling myself a story about the kind of person I was before I fell. I want to believe that I was a decent man doing the right thing. Fighting the good fight, diving back into Hydra territory even after everything Zola did to me at that factory.

But it wasn’t like that. There wasn’t much good in me to start with, and the serum only brought out the worst. Made me even more selfish, violent, vengeful. Greedy enough to use my best friend. Fuck him without kissing him once, rough and careless.

I don’t want to remember it like this. I want to remember something better, but I can’t.

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ENTRY #27

32557038.

On bad days, when I can’t stand to remember anything else, I hang onto my service number. It’s more than mine, it’s _me_. Sometimes more than _Soldat_ , Bucky, James, or Sergeant Barnes. Sometimes it’s all I’ve got.

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	5. ACT III: fault lines

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**ACT III: fault lines**

**{2017}**

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“What’re you writing?” Steve asks.

Bucky closes his blue notebook, smiles, and says, “You know I’m not gonna tell you.”

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Steve is stronger, but Bucky is faster. Only by a bit, but it’s enough to make a difference when they race through the forest at the back of the property.

“C’mon, old man! Pick up the pace.”

Steve pushes himself, like he rarely has to do with anyone besides Bucky, running full tilt along the wooded path, but he doesn’t catch up until Bucky wants him to.

Then he’s pushed against a tree, being kissed in a way that he’s never been kissed before. Deep, needy, with so much purpose that Steve isn’t even surprised when Bucky drops to his knees and pulls down his shorts and boxer briefs.

“You--are you sure?” Steve asks. “You don’t have to do this if you aren’t ready--”

“I’m ready, and you look pretty ready too,” Bucky says, grinning.

Steve leans his head back against the tree, eyes closed. They shouldn’t, not with this lie between them, growing bigger every day. He fixes his clothes, shaking his head.

“Jesus, Steve. Why not?”

When he doesn’t answer--can’t answer--Bucky says, “I want you to take me back to the house and fuck me.”

“Seriously?” Steve tries not to look too hopeful, but he can feel the excitement showing on his face. “Before, you, uh, usually wanted it the other way around.”

“Next time,” Bucky says. “Right now I need you in me. But don’t get any bright ideas about being in charge, ‘cause you aren’t.”

God, he’s weak. So fucking weak.

Steve hurries back to the house, Bucky barely ahead of him. They make it all the way to bedroom, but only because Bucky says, “We’re doing this right. I’m not making love against a wall or a floor anymore, not if there’s a bed around.”

_Making love._ Bucky never said that before, not once, because he didn’t have any reason to when they were only fucking around.

“Buck, I need you to tell me something, and be honest. Would you want this if we’d never been together before?”

Bucky grabs him by the collar of his shirt and yanks him in close enough that Steve can feel his breath on his skin. “You ask the dumbest fucking questions, you know that?”

Bucky pulls him toward their bed and pushes him down. “Get undressed,” he says. “I want to see every pretty inch of you.”

“C’mon, we both know you’re the pretty one,” Steve says, but he follows Bucky’s orders. He’s always been excellent at that, in bed if nowhere else.

“Smartass,” Bucky says, but there’s no heat behind it.

Steve hasn’t been this nervous to have sex since his first time with Bucky, bent over a desk in his quarters at the S.S.R. That night left him wrecked and ashamed, but it was so good that he could never regret it, no matter how selfishly Bucky had used him. When they fall into bed together, naked and kissing, Steve has a horrible thought: that maybe his lie evens the score, one great betrayal of Bucky’s trust to balance all the smaller violations against his own. That’s bullshit, but it’s comforting bullshit.

Bucky pulls away from him and asks, “Where are you at? Because it sure ain’t here.”

“God, I’m sorry. I want this, want you…”

He kisses Bucky again, but it’s half-hearted, as broken as he feels.

“Stop, just--stop. It’s okay.” Bucky sits up, breathing hard, and runs a hand through his hair, messing it up even worse. “I can wait. Christ knows you’ve been waiting patiently enough.”

Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s right shoulder, leaning on this man he’s spent his life needing, loving, chasing. That could be why he feels so drained all the time.

_I’m empty_ , Steve thinks. _Empty, because I poured all of myself into you._

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The fourth of July is just another day in Bedfordshire, and Steve likes it. This isn’t a time for fireworks or national anthems or red, white, and blue dancing monkeys. Life goes on as usual, in its busybody small town manner, and no one pays any attention to him at all. He can have a normal birthday like a regular person, if a burned cake and no visitors could be called normal. Steve doesn’t care. He and Bucky have never been any good at cooking, and the only person he needs is right here with him already.

“You can’t tell it’s burned with the icing on it,” Steve offers.

Bucky snorts, but he doesn’t look up from his work. He’s carefully placing ninety-nine candles on the cake, a joke that Steve wouldn’t find particularly funny coming from anyone else.

“You’ll be able to tell when you eat it,” Bucky says.

He’s right; the cake is edible but awful. They don’t throw it away, though. If growing up in the Depression taught them anything, it’s that you should never let something go to waste if it’s salvageable.

Steve finds Bucky awake at three-thirty the next morning, writing in his red spiral notebook. He finished with the blue one a week ago, then zipped it up in his backpack with all the care and purpose of closing a bank vault, like its worth was immeasurable. It is, Steve thinks, if the journals hold Bucky’s patched-together memories.

“Do you want some tea?” Steve asks.

Bucky doesn’t answer for a full minute. He finishes scratching out some thought or another, then closes the notebook so quickly that the ink can’t be dry yet.

Then he looks up from the floor, smiles that pained half-smile he’s prone to, and says, “Yeah. Sounds great.”

Steve makes two mugs of ginger tea with honey, the most soothing thing he can think of, and carries them back to the living room. Bucky is still sitting in the corner, now petting Anthony. He takes the tea with his metal hand, the vibranium clinking against ceramic, an overloud noise in the quiet before dawn.

“You’re still not used to it, are you?” Bucky asks.

“What? Your arm?”

Bucky takes a long sip of his tea, then sets his cup on the oak floor. “All of it. The arm, my abilities, what I did for Hydra. That I’m nothing like I used to be.”

Steve shakes his head. “You’re still _you_ , Buck.”

“Then why do you keep looking at me like I’m a fucking time bomb?” Bucky asks, something sharp in his voice.

That’s new, impatience from the calm man he’s become since he escaped Hydra, but Steve loves it. This is the Bucky he knew in the war, all hard edges and unforgiving words. Familiar, if not kind.

“You’re making my point for me,” Steve says, laughing. “You’re a pigheaded pain in the ass, like always.”

Bucky leans back against the wall, head tipped up and eyes closed. “You really believe that I haven’t changed?”

“Of course you’ve changed. We both have. But that doesn’t take away who we are.”

Bucky sighs, reaches for his tea, and drinks it slowly, eyes closed like it's a great pleasure to savor. When he's done, he takes Steve’s hand, holding on tight.

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	6. THE RED JOURNAL: a matter of circumstances

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**THE RED JOURNAL: a matter of circumstances**

**{2017}**

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ENTRY #41

It’s all coming back to me better these days, the good and the bad. Getting up to mischief with Steve in Brooklyn. Long nights holding vigil over him as he fought off one illness or another, certain this was it, this was the time my best friend was gonna die. Singing “Star Spangled Man with a Plan” to a crowd of liberated prisoners and dragging Steve into it; holding onto him as he belted out some off-key abomination that could only be called singing if you were real generous.

Kreischberg, Siberia, London, Brooklyn, D.C. Cells and bank vaults and cryo chambers. A tiny apartment in Red Hook with a view of the Statue of Liberty. This farmhouse in the middle of backwater England, ivy-covered and safe. Every home I’ve ever had.

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ENTRY #44

There’s a Hydra agent in the backseat of a car. I rip him out of it and throw him into oncoming traffic. Let’s call him Lackey.

There’s a redhead covering her charge, and I shoot him through her. A Widow-- _the_ Widow. Natasha, Steve calls her.

There’s a blonde woman sitting beside her dead husband. Maria Stark. I choke the breath out of her, and twenty-five years later Steve drops his shield. Gives it up, paying my penance.

It wasn’t me who did all that. That’s what Steve says, and Steve never lies.

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ENTRY #53

I used to lie all the time. Small lies, mostly:

_I sure did all those Hail Marys you prescribed, Father._

But sometimes they were bigger:

_Yes, Steve. I want to follow you back into hell._

_Yes, Captain. Whatever you say, Captain._

Every now and then I still tell a real whopper, something without a speck of truth to it:

_I remember them all._

Maybe I should do a thousand Hail Marys and see if it cures me of Hydra’s programming.

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ENTRY #57

Steve still won’t make love with me, even though he wants to as much as he ever did. I can see the need branded all over him, feel it every time he touches me, no matter how innocent it is. But he never goes further than kissing me, and I can’t figure out why.

I’ve got some ideas, but none of them are pretty, so I keep them to myself.

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ENTRY #60

Bedfordshire is so small that there weren’t many kids roaming around on Halloween night, but we got a few trick-or-treaters. A girl dressed up as Rey from _Star Wars_ , carrying a glowing toy lightsaber and a couple of fictional superheroes. Even a little Iron Man showed up, a pretty curly-haired kid who told Steve that he looks like Captain America.

Steve blushed such a bright pink that I had to laugh. He’s about as subtle as a hammer, and I can’t help but love him for it.

I think I might love everything about him, even the shit I don’t like.

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MISSION REPORT #202

I wrote suicide notes and left them for Steve to find and I don’t know if he did or if someone else dug them up when they cleared out my desk at the S.S.R. and I don’t remember what I wrote but I know that when I was hanging from that railing and I had the chance to take Steve’s hand I didn’t I didn’t take his hand until it was too late

I only hesitated for a moment just one moment that made the difference between being free and being a thing

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MISSION REPORT #204

i can’t do this i can’t do this i can’t do this

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MISSION REPORT #206

There’s a curly-haired girl who I shoot in the back of her blonde head. Goldilocks.

There’s a curly-haired girl on my doorstep dressed up like a superhero. Iron Girl.

I can’t remember their names and I can’t remember mine but Steve does.

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ENTRY #61

I’m better now. Had a rough couple of days where I wasn’t really me anymore. I can’t tell Steve why, just in case he never got the letter I wrote him. I don’t want him to know I wanted to die, and if he does, I’d rather not hear about it.

Lying to him, lying to myself, lying all around. That’s what liars do.

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ENTRY #66

I still can’t remember being in love during the war. I remember so much else: the ugly things I did to my enemies; the ugly things I did to Steve; the rare moments of peace, snatches of happiness in the middle of hell.

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ENTRY #70

Steve never lies, but he lied to me, has been lying to me for nearly a whole goddamn year.

I can’t remember being in love because I wasn’t.

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	7. ACT IV: terminus (the end of the line)

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**ACT IV: terminus (the end of the line)**

**{2017}**

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Bucky wakes him in the middle of the night on Thanksgiving with a kiss. Hard, angry, so greedy and brutal that Steve almost thinks he’s fallen back into 1944. And God help him, but it turns him on more than every sweet, patient kiss they’ve shared all year.

When Bucky reaches down to tug at his boxers, Steve shakes his head, pushes at his chest, and says, “I’m not—ready.”

Bucky laughs, but it’s a low, ugly noise. “That’s the second lie you’ve told me since I came home.”

Steve turns his face away, because Bucky _knows_. He knows, and now everything is going to fall apart.

“Buck, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” There’s something almost like compassion in his voice for a moment, but he’s steel and cold fire again when he says, “Take off your clothes.”

“You can’t wanna—”

Bucky kisses his throat, sucks with a sweet violence that may bruise for all of a minute, then whispers, “I do. Been wanting to for ages, and now that I remember more, I can’t see why we shouldn’t. The only reason you didn’t want to was because you were afraid to take advantage, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

Bucky draws away and pulls his shirt over his head. Even in the midnight darkness, Steve can see his arm gleaming, moonlight caught on the shifting vibranium plates. He’s stronger and sturdier now than he was during war, wearier too, and just as beautiful.

“Let me remind you how this goes, since you seem to be the forgetful one tonight,” Bucky says. “When I tell you to do something in bed, you do it.”

A shock runs over Steve, liquid hot, and he’s harder than he’s ever been in his life. He’s never wanted to follow an order more, so he takes off his clothes.

Bucky pushes him onto his back. “You always have been too pretty for your own good, you know that?”

Steve can feel himself blushing, and he’s happy that the night will hide it. “If you say so.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, but it comes out too broken to sound anything but insecure. Steve knows he’s something to look at now—even if he is a _specimen_ —but he hadn’t been before the serum. Nobody noticed him back then, except for Peggy. (And Bucky, maybe, in his own odd way.)

Steve can’t care about that right now, not when Bucky ducks down and starts sucking him without warning. He rocks up, then gasps, “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

But Bucky only takes him deep, moaning around his cock, and then it doesn’t matter if he wasn’t wanted before. Bucky wants him now, even though he’s a liar, a liar, and what if this doesn’t mean anything? What if Bucky just wants a good fuck before he packs his things and walks away?

Bucky stops sucking him and says, “Stop thinking so hard.”

He throws an arm over his eyes, because he might just cry like a damn child.

“Steve. If you really don’t want to do this, we don’t have to,” Bucky says. “I thought you did—”

“I do,” Steve says. “I need you. I’ve been needing you since I lost you.”

And long before that too, because even when he was Bucky’s, Bucky had never been his.

“I don’t want to fuck you when you’re crying,” Bucky says.

Steve scrubs his tears off of his face. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

There’s a beat of silence, heavy with all the things he never dared to say before.

“That how it is?” Bucky asks. “You want me to treat you like trash again?”

Steve swallows, pushing down his shame. “I didn’t want to feel used, not out of bed. But when we—yeah, the way you did me, I liked that.”

Bucky climbs on top of him and kisses him, rough again, deep and demanding. Then he digs through the bedside table drawer for the lube that they’d bought months ago and never used. He slicks up his cock, then his fingers, and reaches between Steve’s legs to touch and tease. It doesn’t take much to get him ready, and he’s babbling, begging to be fucked.

Bucky turns him over onto his belly and takes him that way, hard but slow. And it nearly sets Steve off. It’s been such a long time.

“I missed this,” he says. “Missed you.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says.

That stings to hear, but Steve gasps anyway, burying his face in the bedding. It’s good, it’s so good, same as it always is when they’re together.

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Steve can barely breathe when Bucky is finally finished with him. He hurts all over, from the bite mark on his shoulder to the ache between his legs where he’d been fucked so well. They’ll be fleeting pains, quick to fade, but for now Steve wants to savor them.

Sometimes he wonders what it would have been like to do this before the serum, how it might have felt to boast his bruises for days instead of hours. It’s a stupid fantasy, and impossible besides, since it took his transformation for things to change between him and Bucky.

When Bucky finally pulls out of him and lies by his side, Steve asks, “Are you leaving?”

Bucky snorts. “No, you goddamn idiot. I'm not leaving.”

He reaches for Bucky, closing his hand around his metal wrist. “Buck, I—”

“Don’t. What you did, it wasn’t right, and I don’t know if there’s any way to make it right, either.”

Steve squeezes Bucky’s wrist, hungry for something strong and solid to hold onto. “I know.”

“Then why’d you do it?” Bucky asks. “I already question everything I remember about myself. Hydra shocked most of it out of me, and what I’ve got left isn’t much. You didn’t have to—to make it worse.”

The answer is sad and small and not nearly enough to excuse the lie he told, but Steve owes him all the truth he has left.

“I wanted you to need me like I always needed you,” Steve says. “And maybe I wanted it to be different, what we were during the war. Love instead of…”

He doesn’t have to say it for both of them to know the truth. It’s branded on both their hearts, and it lives under their skin, a history that no lie can shake.

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They fuck twice more before dawn, first going down on each other, then with Bucky on top of him, straddling his waist. When they’re done, they lie in a sweaty heap, tangled together and breathing hard.

Bucky holds him close and runs his fingers down his straightened out spine, tracing every ridge.

“I do love you now,” he whispers. “That hasn’t changed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m mad as hell, but I don’t want you to think you lost me.”

_You should leave_ , Steve thinks. _I don’t deserve you._

But Bucky didn’t deserve his love during the war, and he got it anyway. Maybe it’s Steve’s turn to accept what's being given freely, instead of questioning whether or not he should have it.

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	8. THE WHITE JOURNAL: the day after forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that this fic was originally supposed to be longer, but I realized as I wrote this chapter that this was the way I wanted to conclude the story. I hope you enjoy the ending! :)

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**THE WHITE JOURNAL: the day after forever**

**{2018}**

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ENTRY #90

Being lied to chips away at the trust between two people, but it also messes with your trust in yourself. I keep thinking about the things I can finally remember, and I wonder if any of them are right, if I can even separate real from fake anymore. It feels like living a true/false test, constantly checking everything I know, waiting for an error. Because if just one thing is a lie, then the whole card house collapses.

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ENTRY #93

Steve is sorry. I know because he’s told me at least once a week for the last two months, sometimes with his words and sometimes with his body. I hate the nights when he’s trying to make up for what he did, when he goes out of his way for my pleasure without giving any thought to his own. It’s a subtle difference from his usual submission in bed, but I can tell.

Steve is sorry, and he’s doing his best. Sometimes that’s got to be enough.

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ENTRY #114

I had lots of sweethearts before the war, but I never loved any of them. I’ve never been in love with anybody besides Steve.

Steven Grant Rogers, my little shit of a best friend, crooked-backed and color blind with more strength of heart than the rest of Brooklyn put together.

Captain America, everyone’s favorite star spangled superior officer.

The man on the bridge, a stranger I recognized when I didn’t even know my own name.

Steve, my lover and my friend, a boy in need of rescue, then a man always rescuing me.

Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve.

Sometimes it feels like my whole goddamn world has always revolved around him. And the worst part is also the best part: I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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ENTRY #117

I still have bad days and worse nights. Dreams that come alive, the colors too bright, real and unreal, like a painting that crawled off its canvas.

Here’s Goldilocks, with a red bullet hole in the back of her head. Here’s Zola, with his serum and his 1,000 volts / 10,000 volts / who knows how many volts, all of it blue blue blue. Here’s the cryo chamber, putting me into my next long sleep, frosting the world in winter white. Everything goes dark, a wiped down blackboard, and the colors disappear.

Steve wakes me from the dreams, kisses me when I need it and gives me space when I don’t. He holds me close when my memories threaten to take me far away.

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ENTRY #123

I don’t remember so much about Brooklyn, but I know I had a mother and sisters and a father I didn’t understand. The first Army issued Barnes. He wanted to die like I used to, but George had the guts to do it and the smarts not to leave notes. I bet those letters I wrote put a lot of people through hell, thinking I died on purpose.

And I nearly did, but that _nearly_ is important.

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ENTRY #130

Here’s a thing that I do remember about Brooklyn: cleaning the church floor with a scrub brush while Steve sat on his skinny ass. He wasn’t allowed to help because it would’ve damn near killed him, and boy was he sore about that. But he’d caused as much trouble as I had—though I can’t remember what exactly we’d done—and he kept me company while I worked.

Steve hated that, sitting on the sidelines while I was punished. That was what he always hated most about being sick, that he couldn’t help.

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ENTRY #132

Things with Steve, they’re not all right, not yet, but I’m starting to think we can get there. We can get there, given enough time. And what’s a little more time to men like us?

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ENTRY #134

It’s still hard to wrap my head around, that Steve and I are old-young men in a new world. Everything urban is so bright and sleek but dirty underneath, like something out of a sci-fi novel, but out in the middle of nowhere it could be any time. Bedfordshire is a hell of a lot older than New York, so I don’t feel so out of place here.

Steve is a city boy through and through, and I keep waiting for him to wilt under the simplicity of rural life. But he swears he’s happy, and he seems to be.

I’m happy too, most of the time, and that’s more than I ever expected to have again.

I think I might want to stay here forever, then a little longer.

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ENTRY #141

I have good days too. More, the longer I’m away from Hydra. Sometimes it only takes something small, like biting into a ripe plum, to start my day off well. Sometimes, when I’m right on the edge of a bad day, it takes something more significant to tip things in the opposite direction. Steve is usually the significant thing that saves me.

When spring comes back to Bedfordshire the whole place turns green. The grass, the leaves, the ivy climbing the walls. Winter melts away with the rain and new life sprouts up all over the fucking place, and it’s beautiful.

I start gardening again. It’s more than upkeep this time, a deeper sort of work than weeding and pruning. I plant seeds for every kind of flower that might survive in English soil, and it’ll probably look a mess once they’re all blooming, but I don’t care. It can be the ugliest garden in the world, and I’ll still be here to watch it grow.

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“All through a lifetime, I'll be loving you and then, on the day after forever, I'll just begin again.” - Bing Crosby, “The Day After Forever”

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_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading my fic. Please feel free to share you thoughts on it in a comment below. :)


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